


Angels with Singed Wings

by Kissa



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Porn, Boys In Love, Confessions, Crying, First Love, First Time, Happy Ending, Hurt Jace Wayland, Insecure Alec Lightwood, Insecure Jace Wayland, Jace Wayland Deserves Nice Things, Jace Wayland Needs A Hug, Love Confessions, M/M, Parabatai, Parabatai Bond, Parabatai Feels, Secretly a Virgin, Virgin Alec Lightwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-19 03:14:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29744130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kissa/pseuds/Kissa
Summary: Alec is trying to deal with his immense guilt and dark thoughts after being possessed by the demon who killed Jocelyn. Jace tries to reach him through his misery, but it's too late to get his parabatai back and for things to be like before between them.
Relationships: Alec Lightwood & Jace Wayland, Alec Lightwood/Jace Wayland
Comments: 22
Kudos: 30





	1. Falling or The Truth Is Not Enough

_ We’re parabatai. Sometimes it feels like a distant dream. We’ve drifted apart. Wonder if it’s too late to mend the rift between us.  _   
  
Jace stood on the roof of the Institute, between a hurting Alec and his target in the distance.    
  
“Same side, remember?” He said, stalling. Looking for an opening, even the smallest little crack in Alec’s self-flagellation loop.    
  
He found Alec shooting arrows at the moon from the Institute’s roof and the bond told him how bad it was this time.    
  
Jocelyn’s body is downstairs in the morgue, along with the others the demon got killed. Izzy is barely alive, recovering from a nasty wound and from the possession.    
  
And Jace… Jace feels, for the first time in his life, overwhelmed and scared like a small child, wishing there was an adult he could call and ask for help and advice, because the two people he loves the most in the whole world have been possessed and are falling apart right in front of him.    
  
He hasn’t even stopped to breathe since he was tortured, and on the run, and escaped, and hunted, and imprisoned, interrogated, tortured some more, then released. It never ends.    
  
No matter how much he gives, how much he sacrifices, he still can’t keep his little sister and Alec safe.    
  
How the demon was able to slip past the wards is a horrible failing. Wards are supposed to be impenetrable, but this demon was able to Trojan Horse itself in by hiding in a corpse. Jace thinks they should find the stupid warlock who put up those wards and ask for their money back, but it’s probably Magnus Bane. Valentine is always ten steps ahead of them all these days and that fact scares Jace out of his mind.    
  
Bane. What a fitting name, since it’s exactly what the man has been since he entered Jace’s world with muddy boots on and rudely sat himself down at the head of the table. Alec hasn’t been the same since the failed attempt at recovering Clary’s memories, and Jace himself nearly died saving Alec from being dragged into the chaos realms.    
  
But he must focus and find something, anything, to jar Alec long enough and drag him out of his funk. He stands between Alec and the horizon, knowing Alec won’t shoot at him although he’s quick enough and good enough to narrowly miss Jace. 

“I couldn’t save you from Valentine. I couldn’t find you in time, I couldn’t stop them from throwing you in jail and torturing you,” Alec snaps, sounding unfairly harsh. “I was possessed, Izzy was possessed and she got injured, while I was acting as Head of this Institute. It was my hand reaching into Jocelyn’s chest. It’s my fault you and Clary don’t have a mother now. So don’t tell me it was the demon. Don’t you fucking dare!”    
  
“Alec… Alec!” Jace tries. This is so, so bad. So much worse than Alec’s usual self-blame. “Please, stay. Let’s talk it through, just you and me. Just us parabatai. We’ll sort it out. You don’t have to do anything drastic.”   
  
“It’s way too late for that, Jace.”   
  
Jace resorts to the one recourse he’s never used because of how unfair and shattering it is.    
  
“Please Alec. If not for you, then stay for me. I need you.”    
  
It’s not a lie. He was still tortured, by Valentine and the Clave alike, and there simply wasn’t any time for him to recover from that in any way.

“I need you, Alec.” Jace repeats. “I need you to stay with me.”    
  
It’s the most vulnerable he’s ever been, and if it doesn’t pay off, then…    
  
Alec’s eyes narrow.    
  
“You don’t get to fuck with me like that, Jace. Not anymore.”    
  
With those words, he jumps over the ledge and Jace is near it in a heartbeat, looking down in horror. But Alec activated his runes while he was talking and now he’s landing softly down below, running off into the night.    
  
Jace knows where he is off to, with his anger and his powerlessness.    
  
To Magnus Bane, who will pour him a glass of something strong, and another, and another, then tell him everything is alright and not his fault. And Alec will readily believe _him._ _   
_   
Jace can’t stop his hands from trembling as the tears roll down his cheeks.    
  
He’s lost Alec for good and with him, he lost everything. 

He feels his throat narrow and his airways close as panic hits.   
  



	2. Soaring or The Promise of Scorched Tomorrows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alec returns home to Jace and the two parabatai extend their vow to encompass every part of them.

  
Alec runs through the night, glamoured to the few mundanes still on the streets at that hour.  
  
He stops at the base of Magnus’ building, looking up.  
  
It would be so simple - go up there, say a few words and take what’s coming to him. What Magnus thinks he deserves. Or what Magnus wants for himself.  
  
But it’s easy to throw the responsibility onto someone else, to make them decide íf you’re a man trying his best or a monster, just to get to that dose of shame that awaits on the other side with the certainty of a vow at the end of the night.  
  
And Alec can’t. He can’t go about getting his punishment in covert, workaround ways, using the good intentions of others.  
  
He’s done this all his life; it’s all he’s ever known.  
  
Mess up, get punished, try again. And when he got too old for his father to belt, he started going about it in more intricate ways. Get himself beaten while sparring. Train too hard and forget to heal his skinned knuckles. Challenge Jace a bit too recklessly.  
  
But this, now, feels like the very definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.  
  
It will never feel better. He’ll never feel light and innocent again, because consequences are piling up, unavoidable, and he’s not just thinking of the corpses stored in the basement of his home.  
  
But there’s at least one thing he can save and not idly watch as it crumbles to nothing because of him.  
  


* * *

  
Jace uncharacteristically slipped under his covers after showering. He’s all cried out and exhausted, his mind racing with scenarios of the myriad different ways he’s lost Alec.  
  
The heavy blankets on top of him, hiding him from the world, are as close to the feeling of safety he can get without Alec by his side. It’s like being in a womb, protected from the world and the pain it holds at least for a little while, but sadly this time there is no bliss from forgetting.  
  
The covers shift and a corner is lifted as Jace feels Alec slip into bed with him, still damp from a shower and wearing fresh sleeping clothes.  
  
The room is dark, save for the moonlight staining everything it touches silver.   
  
Alec says nothing, feeling for Jace in the dark under the blankets. His fingers encounter wetness and he gasps. He never was able to deal with Jace’s tears, his parabatai crying is his kryptonite, and now the knowledge he’s caused these tears is grabbing him by the throat and squeezing mercilessly.  
  
“I’m here, it’s alright. It’s going to be alright.” He says, but his words sound hollow. Even he knows he can’t promise that.  
  
“I thought I’d lost you for good.” Jace says, having turned around, his voice muffled against Alec’s clothed chest. “Alec, you can’t… you can’t run away like that.”  
  
Jace’s hands are cold on Alec’s belly, searching for something they do not find at first, perhaps the reassurance that Alec is here to stay.  
  
The hands slide higher, across abs, obliques and pecs, tangling momentarily in the soft fuzz on Alec’s chest before going higher, pulling the old t-shirt off over Alec’s head.  
  
“Jace? Don’t play with me like this. I can’t take it. Not now.” Alec’s voice is pleading and small. He’s at his weakest here, in Jace’s bed, their skin now touching in places it shouldn’t. Not between parabatai.  
  
“I used to think the fear of losing myself is dwarfed by the fear of losing you. But tonight I have learned they are one and the same.” Jace whispers. His lips move on the thin skin over Alec’s collarbones, trailing up to his neck. “I find I am not ready to give you up. Not to death, not to the Clave. Not to the warlock.”  
  
It feels like he is stealing fire from the gods or erasing his name out of Death’s book - something so massive, so cosmic and timeless, thwarted only by human recklessness. His own recklessness. He knows what he has to do. Alec’s comfort will come at the cost of his own, but his life has always been a zero sum in all the ways it hurts the most.   
  
Jace has dipped his toes into intimacy with others, and has tasted a few instances of shared pleasure, but nothing as irreversible as what he’s promising.  
  
He’s basically the man showing up on his friend’s doorstep in the middle of the night, drenched in blood.  
  
And Alec, how else, is the man who has a shovel at the ready and tarp already in the car.  
  
“Don’t let me slip away,” is all the reassurance Alec needs before he lets Jace claim the last part of him he’s never dared to bare before anyone else. 

“You are mine, Alec. Life will leave my body before I let you go.” He says, heated and breathless, leaning close and bringing their lips together, their breaths mixing before he sinks into their first kiss and swallows Alec’s little surrendering mewl.  
  
It turns out bravado and cockiness are good substitutes for practice, as Jace remembers to reach into his nightstand for the lube he keeps there. 

There’s a sense of urgency between them, although Jace is in no hurry and he finds himself responding in full force to Alec’s now very apparent desire.  
  
Their fingers are laced together on either side of them as they kiss, Jace finally buried to the hilt inside Alec and struggling to center himself enough to move. But the moment is, before urgent, the most overwhelming either of them has ever experienced and their foreheads touch, seeking calm and strength from each other.  
  
There is the daunting urgency and the intense pleasure of finally being joined like this; but on top of that, there is a sense of freedom and feeling outside of time, in a refuge of their own making, the bond settling around them like an impenetrable shield. And in the center of it, there is no judgment, no punishment befalling them, no curse tearing through them and altering them.  
  
Jace cries, but this time, it’s alright because Alec is crying too, and neither could tell if it is pleasure, intensity, relief or all emotions at once.  
  
Even when they move apart, much later, towards the morning, and find their way under the shower in Jace’s bathroom, they still don’t feel like two separate people. Not fully.

They still have the time before dawn to themselves, and Jace regretfully iratzes the marks he left all over his parabatai away.  
  
“Don’t worry,” he says, noticing Alec’s look of regret at seeing the marks fade, “I’ll give you new ones. Maybe in places our clothes cover.” He adds, hovering over Alec like a large panther.  
  
They are drying up on the bed and Jace makes good on his promise, lightly pressing two fingers into the soft flesh on the inside of Alec’s thighs.  
  
Alec’s legs fall open easily for him and he places soft kisses onto his parabatai’s lower belly before finding his target and sucking a wine-coloured mark on the inside of a thigh.  
  
Alec trembles and melts beneath him, pleading incoherently, probably not sure for what.  
  
Luckily, Jace has an idea and he waits for Alec to look down at him as he slowly takes his soft cock in his mouth. It’s a lot to ask after the night they’ve just had, but he soon feels Alec fill up and harden for him, fists opening and closing in the sheets.  
  
It will never not awe Jace how easily he can command Alec’s body. He soon has him trembling and with only a soft, slow blink, he lets Alec know what he wants, feeling his parabatai come into his mouth, abs spasming visibly and almost making him fold himself in half.  
  
Jace shudders at the thought he was about to let go of his very heart and watch this boy, whom he loves more than himself, give in to the grief and guilt inside him and drift away from their bond.  
  
Like this, their wounds are still there. Open and seeping, closing slowly, not fast enough before they receive new ones. Only now they have each other, and suffering is easier to shoulder when not carried alone.  
  
Their bond changed, not in the way the Silent Brothers warned them it would, but it took from them the ability to hide how they feel from each other. So, for the times when they do not feel like sharing, or cannot bring themselves to open up, there is now no need, and to ignore the other’s hurt is like trying to ignore a physical, large wound.  
  
But the fact that they are now sitting on Jace’s bed, leaning close to each other, kissing lazily and smiling, is still nothing short of magical.  
  
(the end)  
  



End file.
